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Sometime this month, the Ugandan government is due to decide on proposed laws to curb some of the country’s most prominent artists. Song-writers would need to submit their work for approval before anything could be performed; so would script writers for films, video and stage productions. Perceived failure could result in exclusion from a new mandatory register. Not surprisingly, the proposals have been condemned by organisations like Index on Censorship as a draconian intrusion into artistic freedom

What they also do, it seems to me, is reveal the actual power of what they are seeking to restrict. The culture minister says that popular music needs to be controlled because it can be a source of division - which could be interpreted as speaking about corruption and many other forms of injustice, expressing the subversive sentiments which powerful leaders in many countries find uncomfortable.

The power of what is sung, and what we ourselves sing, is easily overlooked. But it can give a voice to our deepest emotions - and it can help shape our whole approach to life.

The Old Testament psalms reflect almost every human condition - there’s anger, grief, despair; there’s illness, desertion, betrayal, and often a deep desire to see justice done. And alongside the lament and the sometimes agonising hope, there’s praise, thanksgiving, celebration. All life is seen in light of a God whose ways might be past understanding, but who is ultimately dependable. It’s not automatic, but keeping on singing about such a God can help to train eyes to recognise a divine presence in the unlikeliest person and the most desperate situation.

It was the ability to keep on singing about a liberating God which helped sustain many slave communities in the American Deep South. They reached out beyond the drudgery and the misery to a promised land ‘way over Jordan’: the bliss of heaven and the end of suffering, for sure. But often there was more than other-worldly pietism; the vision helped to fire the courage to resist and subvert....and sometimes to escape to more immediate freedom.

In Britain at about the same the Chartists produced their own hymn book to further the struggle for equality with such no-nonsense theology as this:

‘Crushed by oppression’s heavy load,
In slavery and want we groan -
That such should be the will of God
We count it blasphemy to own.’

The singing encouraged, motivated, and articulated an important truth which these people had grasped, and were eager to declare with robust passion.

The Ugandan government might succeed for a while in controlling what’s to be sung. But the song of truth won’t be silenced forever.

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